Floods in China

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Floods in China: As if someone had opened the floodgates

Cities cut off, narrow river courses: Floods occur more often in China than in other regions of the world. After many years of relative calm, extreme flood damage again occurred in the summer of 2016.

The Chinese authorities had already issued warnings in the
spring about an increased risk of flooding in the central and lower
Yangtze regions. The last major flood catastrophe had been in 1998,
when floodwaters in the Yangtze and Songhua rivers kept all of
China on tenterhooks for several weeks. The special feature of the
2016 flood: the rains during the 2016 flood season in the central
Yangtze were up to 10% higher than in 1998. And the floods were a
combination of many different, intensive, and often local,
individual events. Critical flood levels occurred in a total of 363
small and medium-sized rivers.

The most serious period of flooding started in mid-June in central
and southern China. For almost a month, the provinces in these
regions were plagued by rainstorms, thunderstorms and hail for
almost a month during the “plum
rain”
(“mei-yu”) season.
There were landslides in many places, and dykes were breached at
179 points. The city of Wuhan, which is particularly prone to
flooding because of its location at the confluence of the Yangtze
and Han rivers and is an example of the unbridled growth of large
cities, experienced one of the most spectacular localised events.
From 1 to 6 July, precipitation in the
city’s four districts was between 930 and
1087 mm, a new record.

Following the severe floods of 1998, China launched an extensive
flood protection programme. Over the following ten years alone, the
government invested more than 620 billion yuan (US$ 87bn). As a
result, the impact of the annual floods has diminished, even though
values have risen sharply. The primary focus of these efforts was
on river flooding. However, the measures adopted were not enough to
cope with the consequences of the torrential local rainfall.

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